Today we looked at the Power Color PCS+ R9 270X which is available for 171 euro. You pay a 10 euro premium for the quality custom cooler which will not disappoint you if the silence is high on your list of priorities. Practically all partners are selling R9 270X cards at a higher price than the HD 7870 GHz Edition and on average you have to pay 10 to 20 euro more for the “new” R9 270X.

The Radeon HD 7870 GHz launched in early 2012 with a retail price of around 340 euro. At press time the same card can still be found available widely for about 150 euro. In other words, it's a great time for gamers on budget since they can get a 1080p capable card for peanuts.

For those who did not know AMD’s new Radeon R9 270X is identical to the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition. That means the R9 270X card is based on the 28 nm "Pitcairn" silicon. The new R9 270X designation is a part of AMD’s rebranding strategy. It is purely strategy. Obviously the HD 7870 is a mature product and AMD wanted to extend the product lifecycle with a name change. However, this is nothing new in the GPU business and we won’t complain too much. The HD 7870 GHz Edition and the R9 270X are still very potent cards and deliver good value for money. The R9 270X does not have True Audio support and it still relies on a hardware CrossFire bridge connector.

However, thanks to the updated display controller hardware the new R9-series cards are a bit better compared to the HD 7000-series when it comes to using multiple displays. Now you can run three-monitor setup, without need for the DisplayPort monitors, because a third monitor can be connected to the HDMI output.

The factory overclock is not high, but it does make the card somewhat faster than reference clocked cards in synthetic tests, but in real life the difference is negligible. We overclocked it by another 6 percent on top of the factory overclock and the difference was still pretty low.

To sum up, you won’t go wrong with the PowerColor PCS+ R9 270X 2GB. This card looks like a good choice for gamers on a budget. The card can easily deliver playable frame rates at 1080p with in-game quality settings at high. The PCS+ cooler looks great and it is very quiet, which is the card’s main selling point.